The Trump campaign’s victim-shaming response to the Michelle Fields incident is eerily familiar

[jpak]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/14/the-trump-campaigns-victim-shaming-response-to-the-michelle-fields-incident-is-eerily-familiar/

One day -- one day very soon -- someone will teach a course on Donald Trump's campaign tactics.

It will come with an eye-grabbing name like, "The Social Politics of Donald Trump's Political Theater" or "A Tour with Donald Trump Around The Grimmest Parts of the American Political Universe." Whatever it's called and wherever it's taught, there will probably have to be some time spent -- perhaps an entire unit -- on Trump and female journalists. And anyone who takes 10 minutes to dissect the tangled story of Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields, a woman who she and The Washington Post's Ben Terris say was grabbed and nearly pulled to the ground by Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, knows why right now.

In the days since this entire incident went public, a lot has happened.

As The Fix's Callum Borchers has reported, first the campaign reportedly conceded that something happened but insisted that Lewandowski would not have been quite so, um, hands-on, if he had been aware that Fields works for Breitbart. But one day later, the Trump campaign -- or at least the select members of the staff who were speaking to the press -- moved on from essentially explaining Lewandowski's behavior as something acceptable only when it comes to non-Breitbart journalists. They started pillorying Fields and telling reporters that the incident never happened. Meanwhile, Breitbart staff members did some digging and suggested that, while something clearly happened, Lewandowski may not have been the man who did the grabbing.

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